Last Verdict Of Guilty Ends Murder Case

Red-faced and still whimpering long after the jury had left the courtroom, Lisa Connelly told her mother that she just wanted to go home, that she wanted to see her baby girl.

Home, however, will be prison for quite a while. After deliberating for 17 hours over three days, the jury found Connelly, 20, guilty of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery for her role in the July 1993 slaying of Bobby Kent.

The verdict ended the last trial in the Kent case. Kent, 20, a deli worker and weightlifter, was murdered by seven friends and acquaintances from suburban neighborhoods who thought he was a bully.

Connelly, of Pembroke Pines, faces seven to 22 years in prison.

None of the seven defendants have been sentenced yet. Broward Circuit Judge Charles Greene said he would start handing down punishment in May or early June.

Connelly, like five other defendants, was charged with first-degree murder and faced the death sentence. Only two defendants, including Connelly's former boyfriend and father of her child, were convicted as charged.

"Maybe they're giving her a break because she's a girl, I don't know," said a disappointed Laila Kent, the victim's sister, after Friday's verdict. "As far as we're concerned, she's the main conspirator."

Kent was stabbed and beaten to death at a remote construction site near Weston by a group that included his longtime best friend, Martin Puccio.

Connelly was a month pregnant at the time with Puccio's child. Prosecutor Tim Donnelly provided evidence that she was the chief conspirator, mad at Kent because he mistreated Puccio and allegedly raped her best friend, Alice Willis.

"She is the casting director for this murder," Donnelly told jurors in his closing argument on Wednedsay.

"It's got to be done tonight," Connelly reportedly told the group as they gathered the night of the murder.

Connelly testified during her trial and said she never knew of the murder plot, contradicting what she told police after Kent's body was found. She testified she thought Kent was only going to be beaten.

Under cross-examination, however, she acknowledged that the police statement, in which she described how plans were made to kill Kent, was the truth.

"What untruths grow in the fertile mind of this girl?" Donnelly said. "The Brothers Grimm have nothing over the tales she tells."

The jury was split on whether to believe Connelly's testimony or her police statement, according to foreman Thomas Swartz. He said he doubted parts of her testimony.

"If you have that much to lose, I don't think what you say can be believed," Swartz said.

Connelly's attorney, Kayo Morgan, tried to distance his client from the actual killing of Kent, which was carried out by Puccio and two other men with knives and a baseball bat.

"She was as far removed from that attack as she could be," Morgan said during an often impassioned four-hour closing argument on Wednesday.

"Lisa's not that cold-hearted, orchestrating Ma Barker-type the prosecution would make her out to be," Morgan said. "She didn't expect any more than a punchout, at worst."

Morgan repeatedly referred to Connelly's love for her year-old daughter, Megan, and her dog, Scrappy, a puppy at the time of the murder.

Donnelly sought to defuse the sympathy defense.

"We are here because the charge is murder," he said. "We are not baby-sitting a juvenile."

Swartz said that one juror initially said she could never convict Connelly of anything, but that eventually the discussions centered only on the evidence.

"I have a daughter the same age as Lisa's," Swartz said. "You have to just put that out of the picture and look at the law and the facts."

Having heard all the evidence, Swartz said he did not think the Kent murder defendants were unique.

"I don't feel the kids are very different, they got caught in a bad situation," he said. "Once that roller coaster started, no one could stop it."